(You probably meant no bid.) And besides they do: I was quite close to follow the shtf in Sept-Oct 2008, when mutual funds closed the redemption window as there was no bid for their assets, and consequently no way to calculate the daily value, nor liquidity obtainable to process the redemptions.

Yes "no bid". I meant sovereign bond markets and more specifically the bond market of the global reserve currency. When these beasts go no bid that is collapse of an empire, thus very rare perhaps every 309 years (I believe that might be the cycle according to Armstrong's model,haven't verified).

...but this resource grab is so out of whack in relation to global consciousness and fairness that it is not easily done. They need the consent of the sheep at minimum to do it, but otoh the population of sheep (the boomers) will soon experience a rapid decline due to the reason that TPTB is killing them via the big pharma! So it's not going to be easy.

You've hit precisely on my bifurcation of the global economy into a dying NWO and prospering Knowledge Age.

I do believe many of the youth are hopelessly ingrained with socialism ideology and thus they will support the NWO as a "reform the system, 99% against the 1%". You can clearly see this in both the Occupation Wallstreet rallies and even the posts of the younger guys in this thread (they think they are fighting for freedom yet they are really fighting for a collectivized outcome...and boy do they fight for it!).

capital flows into the USA will have no where alsoelse to go! because the investors won't have the knowledge or options and the capital is finally realized as destroyed).

I hope you realize Pruden's point that what you call "capital" here is "liquidity" and that is not affected by changes in asset values, rather it is diametrically the opposite: rising liquidity causes the fall of interest rates and they both cause the rise in asset values and vice versa.

And I hope you realize that my point is that "capital" can't be measure a priori. We only know the difference between "liquidity" and "capital" after the "the tide goes out, and we can see who wasn't wearing underwear" (Warren Buffet).

So relatively the knowledgeable capital—that can flow out of bonds into gold and crypto—is immense.

My bold 2013 prediction for forward escape and bitcoin singularity (the collapse of fiat and bonds, leaving only the CB's printing money to prop up their market in hyperinflation, and the printed money chasing bitcoin prices up to unfathomable heights denominated in currency, and quite high in purchasing power as well - it is already the case that CB's buy all the new bond issuance as there is no sane market actor doing it with their own money!) was just a few years early. With the developments in Bitcoin in the last 2 years with TPTB buying clandestinely with both hands and enacting draconian regulation in this 100% transparent chain, I have more confidence than ever to the scenario becoming true soon.

You underestimate the degree to which socialism is ingrained in the psychology of the people.

And you underestimate the technological weaknesses of Bitcoin that put into the lap of regulation (that the people want!).

Afaics, your conceptual logic is astute (and even you formulate the concepts in a way that adds value to my understanding), but IMHO your analysis is not sufficiently pragmatically based in reality. That is why I was railing against your predictions and I was correct.

They are trying to use it for entrapment of the value to a thing they can control to a larger extent even than the present assets. For this reason diversifying to the private cryptocurrencies now is very prudent. Armstrong's model forecasts that the private assets will enjoy in the coming years, and that includes Bitcoin only to the point that it is perceived as a private asset. Unfortunately in my thinking it is strongly entrenched in a slide to not being one in the years to come.

There are at least two some what orthogonal phenomenons, A) mainstream thinking about what is an alternative asset and/or hot speculation, B) what is actually a protection against the government's (TPTB's) expropriation.

Bitcoin is likely to succeed wildly at A and I assert fail at B.

Problem cryptos have is that most people doesn't trust them (i.e. "they can go poof overnight"). Bitcoin will gain more trust because of the behemoths that will be offering online wallets, etc..

To get around this trust/scale dilemma requires a novel approach that can drive popularity that is orthogonal to misunderstandings and concerns about viability of decentralized digital stores of value. This is one of the key paradigms I addressed in my marketing design for an altcoin.

We had that discussion about distribution recently the Economic Totalitarianism thread. I agree with the issues that have to be balanced.

But I don't think the primary reason for not hurdling the distrust curve is inflation concerns and speculators' opinions. Rather I think if you want to leapfrog Bitcoin you have to paradigm shift that issue. As I wrote, your idea to distribute CKG to those who play the game more is in line with that sort of paradigm shift. Now you just need to make sure they are spending the coin in the game and not just sitting on it as speculators only.

Monero is...what Bitcoin was promised to be (but is not, and likely cannot be) - private cash, and nothing more.

What was Bitcoin "promised to be"? How does the Bitcoin of today not fulfil the description from the Satoshi white paper? Bitcoin is more useful than Monero because it does not force privacy upon its users. It gives its users the freedom to choose their privacy requirements. Cryddit (Ray Dillinger) made a series of insightful posts beginning here arguing against all but niche adoption of strong-privacy coins.

Cryddit's logic is a dinosaur still stuck in the brick-and-mortar Industrial Age, and entirely missing the point of the Knowledge Age. In the Knowledge Age, we obviate the need for trust and everything moves to a meritocracy on the actual content and knowledge, e.g. open source. I have specific ideas of how this will interface with crypto which I won't detail now. You can't have a meritocracy if you can't avert the Economic Totalitarianism coming. We've moved beyond being able to choose. It is being forced on us.

Bottom line is a paradigm shift coming which is going to sweep away your jaded, outdated assumptions.

OTOH, I do understand the criticism that if you have strong anonymity in a coin, then the authorities might be more likely to crack down on it in the future. Thus my thought is that if you put strong anonymity in a coin, you better have all the other aspects worked out so that the coin can't be attacked technologically. Monero doesn't appear to have done that afaik.

Furthermore, even if you assume that protocol-enforced privacy is a positive (which I don't), the trade-offs made to get that privacy have real costs. But we won't fully know what these costs are until something like Monero is trading at a much higher market cap and transaction volume.

That being said, I like Monero because (a) it had a fair launch, and (b) it offers something unique. I would love to see it overtake Dash (Darkcoin) and then Litecoin. But I think best-case scenario for Monero is a few % of the bitcoin market cap.

Monero's anonymity is optional.

I am an autodidact psychologist. I think you like Monero's "fair launch" (no it wasn't entirely fairly launched but that is not relevant to the point I am making) because that "fair launch" has made it nearly impossible to fund the massive amount of work that needs to be done so that it could slaughter Bitcoin. And you really don't want any altcoin to slaughter Bitcoin.

Monero has one small piece of the puzzle done (but not quantum secure and thus in perhaps 15 years all your anonymity is removed), but not nearly enough to scale on all the various points about distribution, use as currency, and scaling the mining decentralized, etc.. And I am not 100% confident that Monero is anonymous but I don't make any specific allegation. I am just not yet comfortable because I haven't put in the effort to do the analysis in great detail on the crypto and the combinatorial type attacks on the rings.

Nevertheless if you need a few years of anonymity on a blockchain, I think Monero is probably the best there is right now. And kudos to the devs!

Cryptocurrency 2.0 (or do I mean 1.0?) ideally would keep the distributive and verification aspects as a part of the tx/mining network as we know it, but somehow allow the acceptance of the transaction to be determined only by the individual/s who receive it.

Cryptocurrency 2.0 (or do I mean 1.0?) ideally would keep the distributive and verification aspects as a part of the tx/mining network as we know it, but somehow allow the acceptance of the transaction to be determined only by the individual/s who receive it.

I think it needs a political battle too from the people - time to unite & challenge this elite!

Tools/weapons will be of great help but 'blood' will be needed too.

If we are fragmented and isolated to each other behind anonymity, stealthiness etc how can we win this battle?

Guerilla warfare is enough?

Just questions that I have no definite answer...

EDIT: We have to use probably both Ninja tactics AND Spartan (heroic, self sacrificing groups of people)EDIT 2: Anyone thinking just to get rich and 'escape' by himself is delusional IMHO. Also, if you think we are not at war... (last edit not directed to you TPTB)

Some where upthread I quoted Nick Szabo on "TTP" as disagreeing with you. He said personal property has always been orthogonal to the need to trust a third party. Without optional privacy, then inherently you must trust the society and the government not to steal from you.

I think what you meant to write is that privacy has never been a non-optional property of money.

I think it needs a political battle too from the people - time to unite & challenge this elite!

Tools/weapons will be of great help but 'blood' will be needed too.

If we are fragmented and isolated to each other behind anonymity, stealthiness etc how can we win this battle?

Guerilla warfare is enough?

Just questions that I have no definite answer...

EDIT: We have to use probably both Ninja tactics AND Spartan (heroic, self sacrificing groups of people)

In the one world reserve currency thread in the Economics forum (and else where such as my reply to rpietila a few minutes ago above) have argued that the masses are going to fall into the NWO outcome and there is nothing we can do to stop that. The political outcomes always favor the banksters, e.g. Napolean's revolution reestablished the same type of system that existed before it. The reason is because of human nature and the Iron Law of Political Economics (Google it).

I believe the technological win is a political win, because when people vote with their actions instead of the voices, then an economic avalanche effect occurs. This is what we were hoping for with Bitcoin, but the technology is not quite right.

We fight by switching our economy. No words. Just a clearly superior option that people adopt because it makes their life better.

Remember I had linked upthread to where I point out the TPTB can't take the internet away from us because it has too high of an entropic vacuum sucking everything in. The best they can do is brainwash the masses into sticking with socialism and falling into the NWO and centralized client-serverservant-master websites.

Hard sells never work and mass manipulation is the domain of the Iron Law of Political Economics.

So in short, yes we win with technology but the devil is in the details of that.

This is why I'll maintain privacy is a matter of usage, but is not a property of money.

Money without optional privacy is a Dark Age.

It is ridiculous to assert that viable privacy is orthogonal to money.

Privacy against the NSA with Bitcoin is very tedious if not impossible.

As we move further into the coming Economic Totalitarianism, the possibility of this Dark Age will become more obvious and visceral.

Problem for Monero is they sell it as being more robust anonymity than CoinJoin or DarkCoin, but Monero is not likely immune to the NSA either since I posit that both I2P and Tor are compromised. Monero's mining would become centralized too if the usage rose to what Bitcoin is facing now.

Climbing the wall of what we need technologically is a massive undertaking.

Regarding "better mining algo", again this is not a property of money I think people who are resorting to these types of arguments to convince themselves that altcoin x is better are kidding themselves.

When Bitcoin is centralized and fully regulated you can appreciate that the mining algorithm goes hand-in-hand with driving the freedom that makes money.

Gold is fungible in principle, as 1 oz. 24 K gold is indistinguishable from any other. That is an inherent physical property of the element, which facilitates its use as a currency.

Bank notes have no such property: they have serial numbers (to fight counterfeiting), and can otherwise be marked. In the 1749 Crawfurd v. The Royal Bank of Scotland case, it was ruled that despite lack of inherent fungibility, the law will not consider any genuine bank note to be different from another, lest their use as currency be hindered, and commerce along with it. In other words, government issued bills are fungible by decree.

Like gold, Bitcoin is fungible in principle, since, as rocks has argued, from the network’s perspective, 1 BTC = any other BTC. The coin is designed to have this property to facilitate its use as a currency.

However, some jurisdictions may decide to:

a) Impede BTC from gaining currency status. One way of achieving this, as Peter R notes, would be to place enforceable legal restrictions on fungibility.

b) Attack BTC fungibility, not necessarily to prevent it from becoming a currency, but to achieve other policy goals, such as combatting money laundering, illegal trade, or tax evasion.[1]

This leads to the question: could legal restrictions on BTC fungibility be technically enforced?

Bitcoin proponents argue that legal restrictions on BTC fungibility would probably always be defeatable or circumventable. On this view, legally restricting BTC fungibility would be like banning the melting of gold: unenforceable in the long run. This, in turn, makes it unlikely that such restrictions would be imposed in the first place.

Monero advocates disagree, because of bitcoin design features, and because legitimate BTC-accepting businesses operating in the relevant jurisdictions must comply with regulations.[2] In addition, they make the assumption, based on prudency, that legal restrictions on fungibility will inevitably be placed on cryptocurrency. Accordingly they have developped a coin for which, as far as they can see, it is technically impossible to enforce such restrictions.

In my eyes, this points to a significant divergence between the positions of BTC and XMR proponents. BTC proponents expect to legally use BTC as a fungible currency -- they may be foiled. XMR proponents anticipate going rogue -- they trust their tech., but cannot expect to use it for open commerce. BTC adopters want a currency suitable for the open market. XMR adopters are building a currency suitable for the black market.

There seems to be room for both.

[1] Note that attacking fungibility is not the only way to pursue such policy goals. The USG currently pursues them in the dollar economy by means such as asset forfeiture, or the ability to freeze bank accounts (these powers can be asserted previous to any court mandate, i.e., without demonstrated guilt), or by placing restrictions on the deposit or withdrawal of cash from banks, or on moving cash across borders. Some though not all of these means can be used in the BTC economy as well (Coinbase *will* freeze your account or seize your funds if so ordered).

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

Fungibility is not the only quality at risk. If the government can regulate money, they can extract all wealth to the misallocation and corruption of the Some Iron Laws of Political Economics. Early on this is tolerable, but in the end game scenario of repeating bouts of socialism where we are now, then a gestapo control over money will result in a severe economic collapse into a Dark Age.

Bitcoin proponents either fail to appreciate what stage of the cycle we are in, or they fully accept that they will go with the NWO fork of the coming bifurcation and take their chances on expropriation. Or the anonymity proponents are incorrect about the coming Economic Totalitarianism (and note there are sub-groups, e.g. some believe it is impossible technologically to make crypto that can't be effectively outlawed by government)

Exactly. Bifurcation is underway. I don't believe it is possible to straddle the fence and that is essentially my complaint against Monero (while also praising their effort).

(MAD magazine) Bush Jr. said, "you are either with us, or against us".

Bitcoin folks appear to think that normal commerce will be non-anonymous. I disagree. I think the normal commerce will be anonymous. Because I think commerce is going to radically change in the Knowledge Age.

They are thinking in terms of the dying paradigm of Amazon.com, Barnes-and-Noble, Facebook, Peter Thiel, Winklevoss triplets, Paris Hilton, etc..

I am thinking along the general direction of Silk Road (but in a more general sense, not just drugs) and software as micropayment service.

Popular activities now amongst the youth in dating are for example swiping to indicate you like someone. That is a micropayment action, just need to monetize it!

What people do is what is economic. You guys are afaics thinking too much in terms of physical production and commerce. You are dinosaurs. The world has changed while you were not looking. The internet changed things in ways you haven't fully observed.

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

Fully agree. But as HeliKopterBen and dEBRUYNE pointed out a few posts ago, a fully private currency such as Monero could just as easily be outlawed in it's entirety. Which puts Monero in the same position as a Bitcoin where blacklist coins are outlawed.

The government can attack the fungibility of both by either outlawing the currency or outlawing blacklist transactions, so the fungibility of both rest to a certain extent on the ability of individuals to interact with the currency outside of the law. This is true for gold or any other money in existence.

For an example, the privacy of gold was broken when they outlawed direct possession and forced everyone into bank notes. Gold used to be able to be used privately (direct transfer) but now it wasn't (no direct transfer legally allowed). The innate properties of Gold and Money did not change, gold was still fungible. What changed was the legal framework around them that prevented that fungibility from being used to gain privacy. This leads me to believe again that privacy is NOT an innate property of money, but is determined by how it is used.

The key distinction of yore was you could escape to geographical frontiers (with your gold). Geography is no longer an option. Physical gold can't be moved without being likely intercepted.

We've entered a new era where the governments could have total control and eliminate all frontiers, if we don't build a technological solution.